For the past few years I've been exploring answers to questions I’ve had with typical Evangelical positions about the Bible and the Christian faith. I've assembled quite a collection of books by authors like Pete Enns, Brian MacLaren, Rachel Held Evans, Rob Bell, and Thom Stark. I've listened to countless podcasts by these same authors or others whose thinking parallels theirs.

To process all that I’m learning, I meet regularly with a friend named Scott who has been exploring the same path I've been traversing. We are both deeply committed to following Jesus Christ. And we're both coming to grips with the fact that we no longer believe the same way we did earlier in our lives. We get together every couple of weeks to discuss what we've been reading, listening to, thinking about. It's exciting to have someone to voice doubts, questions, new ideas, wrestlings over matters of faith with. It's good to know there is no question that is "out of bounds" with him.

I remember clearly one morning, as he got up to head off to work (we meet EARLY for coffee), something inspired me to say this: "Well remember today, they will know we are Christians by our perfect wisdom." (Fully tongue in cheek.) In all of our reading, thinking, doubting, reconfiguring, and discussing it can be easy to get lost in intellectual arguments. But what we've got to come down to is the absolute test of our faith: do we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and do we love people as we love ourselves?

As Bob Goff says repeatedly in his book Love Does, Jesus never went around looking for people who would agree with his ideas, he wanted disciples who would actually DO the stuff he was talking about.

I can humbly state with certainty that no matter how many books I read, podcasts I listen to, or blog posts that I write, I will never reach a point of perfect knowledge about God, faith, the Gospel, Christianity, Heaven and Hell, or the Bible. I'm going to keep searching for and developing answers that help me function as a follower of Jesus, but I must remember the most important thing.

Jesus said to his original disciples "Others will know you are following me by your LOVE." Not your wisdom or perfect knowledge.

The greatest thing I can do today is to love the people God brings across my path and to keep investing my life in the things Jesus said were most important.